we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
by lecornergirl
Summary: The phone rings in her hand almost immediately and when she answers, Jess is laughing on the other end. "Gilmore, are you using Ginsberg as a booty call?" "I found my copy of Howl today," she says in lieu of an answer. Rory/Jess, set five years after S7, not AYITL compliant. [cross-posted from AO3]


In the middle of spring cleaning, Rory comes across her copy of _Howl_, and time stops for a moment.

It's been just over ten years since Jess stole it from her bedroom and gave it back with little slivers of himself tucked inside. She hasn't read it since then but the book has stuck with her, through every move and every new apartment.

At first she kept it with her like a piece of his heart, something to remind her of the good times—because there were good times, hidden between the miscommunications and the teenage anger and the leaving without saying a word. But they've grown up now, learned how to be friends, learned how to navigate around the holes in their hearts where the other used to live. She doesn't need to be reminded of the good times, because she has the real thing just a phone call away. Jess is always up for dinner or coffee, or to listen to her complain about whatever she's writing and then sum up the issue in one eighth of the words she used. He's more secretive about his unfinished writing, but she gets to see drafts before they go to his editor.

Rory hasn't read _Howl_ in ten years, but when she picks it up and flips it open, Jess's scrawls in the margins feel as familiar as coming home. She reads through the poem in its entirety, pausing every now and then to puzzle out what Jess meant with a particular comment. Just as it did the first time around, his insight cuts right through her. These are Jess's thoughts, but they could just as easily be her own.

She hits a particularly lewd line, underlined in Jess's unwavering hand and accompanied by his equally suggestive comment, and blushes. Her thoughts take off a mile a minute before she can do anything to stop them, and—this has been her problem lately.

It's been her problem for months, actually, since one day in late October when she happened to glance at Jess's hands wrapped around a coffee cup and thought, _god, I remember what those hands feel like_. And once she started, she couldn't stop _noticing _things. How he's grown into his frame since they were teenagers, filling out the sleeves of his leather jacket. How his hair is longer now, and mostly devoid of product, so he might even let her mess it up a little. How his face has changed a little, softened out over the years, but all the familiar landmarks she once knew like the back of her hand are still there.

It's been an even bigger problem since New Year's Eve, since she pretended to be a little more drunk than she actually was in order to give the illusion of a safety net and kissed him at midnight. Except they didn't stop at kissing and they didn't stop at midnight and now it's been five weeks of sleeping with her ex, pretending that everything is fine and that friends with benefits was exactly what she was aiming for and that she isn't in love with him again. (Still? The devil, as they say, is in the details.)

Before she can think any better of it, Rory picks up her phone and texts Jess. She takes a picture of the line and his comments, adds _I have a bottle of beer somewhere, I think_, and hits send.

The phone rings in her hand almost immediately and when she answers, Jess is laughing on the other end. "Gilmore, are you using Ginsberg as a booty call?"

"I found my copy of _Howl_ today," she says in lieu of an answer.

"You know, I think he would approve," Jess muses, and in the background she can hear what sounds like him putting his shoes on, and the opening and closing of a door. "Your place?" he asks.

"Don't act like you aren't practically halfway here already," she says, and Jess laughs again.

"See you soon."

* * *

"Turns out I don't actually have that bottle of beer," Rory says when she opens the door some fifteen minutes later.

"I never really cared about the beer," Jess says, and kisses her.

In the past five weeks, she's discovered that kissing Jess now is completely different to kissing him at seventeen, but built on the same familiar bones. He's more self-assured now, like he believes this is something he can have, like he's not constantly on borrowed time waiting for her to say _just kidding_ and leave him alone with bruised lips regretting that he ever gave his heart to anyone.

In the past five weeks, she's learned that Jess does let her play with his hair now that it's not a carefully constructed suit of armour any more. She's discovered that he likes when she runs her hands through it, scratches at his scalp, holds on and tugs a little.

Most of all, in the past five weeks Rory has learned that she and Jess _fit_. They've always had buckets and buckets of physical chemistry, from the moment they met in her room and Jess stole her book. But more than anything, they've always been in sync on some level, able to anticipate each other's needs.

He steers her towards the bedroom, her apartment as familiar to him as his own. _Howl_ is still lying on the bed where she left it, and Jess snorts. "Sorry, buddy, I think this is where we take you out of the equation." He puts the book away and Rory notices how careful he is with it, taking care not to just toss it aside but tucking it into her bookshelf. He's probably shelved it wrong but she can't bring herself to care when Jess is crowding her against her desk, hands on the backs of her thighs until she's sitting on the worn wooden surface.

Rory wraps her ankles around Jess to pull him closer, hands tangled in his hair the way she knows he likes. His hands are on her waist, on her back, everywhere he can reach, and he's soon taking her shirt off so he can reach anywhere he wants.

"You know," Jess says, the slightest bit raspy. "There's something I've been wanting to do since we were seventeen."

"Yeah?" Rory says, thinking that she's going to come back to this phrase later, the way his words imply that he's been thinking about it all these past ten years.

"Yeah," Jess says and kneels down in front of her.

He's pulling her leggings and underwear off when Rory says, "you've done this before."

Jess looks up at her, eyes dark and full of desire. "Not on your desk I haven't." He puts one hand on each of her knees and pulls them apart, and Rory stops questioning him.

The desk is clearly doing something for him because Jess has always been an attentive lover, but never quite like this. It's all Rory can do to grab onto the desk and try to maintain a grip on reality. Jess's tongue is steady and his hands are strong, and Rory goes where he takes her, easily and in no time at all. Her breath comes out in gasps and starts, and she cries out as she goes over the edge.

"Jess," she says, because it's all she can say. "Jess. Oh my _god_."

Jess emerges from between her legs, and his expression is somehow sheepish and smug all at once.

Rory, having regained control over her limbs, practically tackles Jess, landing them on her bed in a tangle of arms and legs. She tugs at his clothes, tossing his t-shirt in one corner of the room and his jeans and boxers somewhere at the foot of the bed. She reaches for him, wraps a hand around him, but he grabs her wrist and stops her.

"It's probably better if we just skip ahead," he says, a faint splash of colour rising on his cheeks. A dozen retorts run through Rory's mind but she doesn't voice any of them, just reaches under the bed for the box of condoms she's started keeping there and hands one to him.

They've been busy, these last few weeks, but this is the first time Jess maintains eye contact as he slides into her. The moment feels big, somehow, bigger than she can understand with most of her brain occupied by the sensations in her body.

Rory finds that she can't look away so she stares right back, fingertips digging into his shoulders and ankles hooked around his knees. In the back of her mind, she realises this is the closest they've come to making love. This no longer feels like something that fits under the umbrella of friends with benefits. Maybe the thought should scare her, but it doesn't. It feels like a relief, like something inevitable.

Jess keeps his eyes on her the whole time and she comes quietly, choked up on the emotion in his gaze, the emotion she knows is mirrored in hers. She sees his climax on his face, too, and feels it in the way his shoulders tense up under her hands and relax again.

He disposes of the condom silently, sliding back into bed without a word. He reaches over to push some hair out of her face and Rory grabs his wrist, turns to kiss his palm.

When Jess finally speaks his words come out confident, but his expression is anything but. "It just seems stupid, you know? Not to tell you."

"Tell me what?" Rory breathes, like she doesn't know.

"That I love you," he says. "Again. Still. Always."

"I love you too," she says, and then: "Do you think we were always going to end up here?"

"'We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter.'"

"What, so I can't use Ginsberg as a booty call but you can quote him now?"

"Hey, I said he would probably approve," Jess points out.

Rory lays her head on his chest and they lie in silence for a while, until she twists around to look at him again. "So, the desk, huh?"

"Listen, you should have seen yourself in that Chilton uniform. There's no way my brain wasn't going to go there."

"Your brain, sure."

"Bite your tongue, Gilmore."

* * *

[A/N: the line rory texts jess is "who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall"]


End file.
